3 Stages of Play for Competitive Success: Stage 1 - Kicking
- Raymond Linares
- Feb 6, 2017
- 8 min read
Hello Pool Playing Fans! It’s a pleasure to be writing for you again. It’s been a while since my previous post as the majority of last year was focused around my marriage and other such major life events. That being said you can expect a slew of new content and training articles coming soon from Linares Pro Pool; starting with this series. I had this particular article ready for release late last month but unfortunately when I went online to create all the diagrams I came across the unfortunate reality that the cue-table website had gone down. As such I’ve been searching for a suitable replacement to their service that would allow me to clearly illustrate the positions on the table I’ll be describing in the rest of the article.
Luckily I was able to find a very suitable and aesthetically pleasing solution and one that I’m excited to be using for my articles moving forward. The solution and application I’m referring to is called “ChalkySticks”. ChalkySticks has a great interface and diagraming tool called “pad” which you can use on your desktop devices to diagram shots and save the images for sharing online or for personal use. There’s a lot of robust features and hidden benefits to using ChalkySticks and I’ll go into those in a future post but for now I hope you enjoy their diagrams in my upcoming posts.
As it relates to this post, I had the pleasure of competing in the Florida State 9 Ball Championships in December, hosted at Zingales Billiards in Tallahassee. The tournament is a season closing event which wraps up the tournament year for the Florida Pool Tour. The FPT is a great regional tour run by pro player “The Sniper” Tony Crosby which gives top level amateurs and pro players a chance to compete regularly in the best venues in the state. Zingales hosts the season closing championships each year and this year had a huge turnout of 90 players visiting and competing in Tallahassee.
The event is a winner breaks, rack your own 9 ball tournament with races to 7 on the winner's and loser’s side. Top amateurs have to give up a 1 game handicap to the field, myself among that list. Other such players include guys like James Roberts, Mike Delawder, James Adams, Nathan Rose and Kyle Bova. The event always turns out a tough field with guys coming in from Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and of course all over FL. The location being hosted in Tallahassee lends itself to easy access to players from nearby states, and the added money of course helps as well. This event was the marker point of my return into serious competitive play and was as much a chance to compete and win another title as it was an opportunity to get back in the mix and re-tune my competitive play at the top regional level.
I noticed some key positions and takeaways from this particular event that I thought would be of great value for various players and for various reasons. Considering I’m up against the top players in the state with the added challenge of giving up 1 game on the wire in a short race format, decision making, control and patience all become of extreme importance. For that reason I’d like to share some of the following strategies, positions, and tactical decisions in the hopes they’ll give you some insight you can apply for your own competitive play. Over the next three blog posts we'll be going over 3 different stages of play for competitive success and I'll be pulling specific examples from my matches to highlight these stages and how they can be used to win extra possessions, games and innings during competitive play. We'll start in this post with two examples from the first stage used in two slightly different capacities.
STAGE 1: KICKING (TO CONTROL)
"Please note for the purposes of the diagrams below, that solid lines during kick shots are where the kicks go with no english and the dotted lines are where I kicked after applying spin."
In my first match of the second day I had to play a top Puerto Rican player who’d come over from the island with a few other players to compete in the event. He was supposedly their top guy and had made his way through day 1 undefeated. As an unknown player he received a 1 game spot from all of our top guys and many people were chatting as him being a favorite to win the event getting a 1 game spot. I of course didn’t know any of this until after our match which I suppose helped me out mentally. In any case a couple situations popped up in this match which I’ll share in a few of these stage outlines. The first being a 2 rail kick safety that came up during the match. My opponent had played a decent safe squeezing the cue ball behind the 8 ball on the head rail but leaving the 1 ball very near the corner pocket. as shown below.
The cue ball was not frozen to the object ball so the initial inclination is to kick 1 rail directly up table and back down to the 1. The problem with, and why that pattern is the wrong way to approach this kick, is because the scratch is obvious and a very big possibility. Both the one rail ball first contact and a potential 2 rails glancing off the 1 make the scratch highly probable. That would give the opponent complete control and in a short race that’s the last thing you need. So the approach has to be to find a pattern that leaves the 1 ball in a much more favorable, big ball position but also keeps the cue ball safe because your coming from a different direction altogether. Here was my solution.
This 2 rail glancing kick out of the top right corner (as you view it) gives you the shooter a much more favorable position in returning this kick with a response for safety or potentially pocketing the 1 altogether. Plus the 1 ball becomes much bigger with contact happening on the short side, and far side of the kick. You could even spin too far and make contact off the third rail as well so the kick is actually way more forgiving than you would assume. I’d venture to say it’s easier than the 1 rail option for the above reasons.
The key factor about this kick that must be stated is that in this range, you’re getting induced spin from the rail because of the sticky cloth conditions. That’s to say that putting no english on the cue ball actually equates to putting 2 - 3 tips of english on whitey after contact with the rail and forces the cue ball to naturally take the 3 rail pattern. To get yourself on the correct line to go directly to the ball, you have to put 2-3 tips of reverse english. 2 tips reverse got me to the high side of the 1, 3 tips would’ve possibly pocketed the 1 ball, but since my cue ball was so close to the bottom rail, I could only reasonably manage slightly more than 2 tips of left english without getting into slight masse territory. Nonetheless this shot turned the position for me and won me this game as I regained control after my opponents next inning.
KICKING TO WIN
In this same match and very early on I had another 2 rail kicking option this time with a much more aggressive strategy. The player left me pinned against the 8 ball in the middle of the table close to the side rail. The 9 ball was repeatedly leaking to the corner pocket off his break and much like this diagram shows, left open opportunities for him to make a ball and potentially earn an early and cheap rack off a combination. What my opponent was not privy to was the fact that I, on occasion have been known to kick like Bruce Lee. In this position here, even though it looks daunting, the door is open for a heart breaking "kick" to the gut for the person who played safe.
The 5 ball is actually in a very large “+2” pattern with a couple different ways to turn this shot into a winning one for the player kicking. Considering the 9 ball is hanging in the jaws a rail first contact on the 5, or ball first carom off the 5 leads to a game winning shot. Naturally the result is the opponent saying “he got lucky!”. Me being a big fan of Efren would’ve said the same thing and would’ve enjoyed the potential tilt factor my opponent would’ve experienced had the carom come off as planned. I aimed my kick roughly 1 rail to the corner pocket and applied the “necessary” english to target the first diamond from the corner pocket near the 9 ball. The 5 ball was just off the bottom rail so I played the kick at a medium firm speed to ensure I not only got to the rail after the 5, but also got separation from the 9 ball after making contact. Choosing the near maximum english version of this kick also ensures that the side pocket is out of play for the 1 rail scratch and also gives me the most favorable direction to make the carom or combination on the 9.
Unfortunately for me I hit the kick “too good” and landed on the line that put me straight at the 1 diamond point. This lead to a double kiss on the 5 and set my opponent up with an easy 5 - 9 combination to win the game. Any variance slightly one way or another with regards to spin or speed leads to a winning solution in that position. Even though I didn’t secure the rack from this shot, it’s important to note the winning strategy and approach from this position. It’s a little bit of a hidden gem from a less nuanced observer who may not be looking at the thought process behind the shot and only looking at the outcome, but this pattern and shot is completely the right one to take and I think if you replay this position over a few times, you’ll find yourself winning more games than you think from a position that no one may expect you to win from. Despite the loss of rack, a smile and the knowledge that I gave myself a shot to steal one off my opponent was enough to sustain me until my next chance to shoot at the table.
At the highest levels we've seen the importance of expert kicking and tactical decision making with the kick play out amongst the best players in the world. In match play situations, games like this can swing in importance and determine crucial situations that ultimately decide the set in or against a players favor. So having a strong game plan and knowledge of the rails is paramount if you're going to break into the next level of play and achieve a level of excellence you haven't achieved yet. I hope this initial step into defensive and offensive kicking has given you some good information and hopefully has shown you some new ways to think about kicking situations like this. Have you personally had kicks you've made in tough situations win you games? Or have you had an opponent make a kick you didn't expect against you? What's your favorite kick shot you've ever seen? Leave your responses in the comments below! If you have any questions regarding any of the information I listed above, make sure to message me as I'd be happy to share what I can with you for your improvement. I hope you've enjoyed this first part of the "3 Stages of Play for Competitive Success". I'll be posting again tomorrow with some important examples for Stage 2: Safety Play for Control Before the Run. Please look out for that article as I'm sure you'll enjoy it if you enjoyed this one. If you did enjoy this article please make sure to share with your friends, teammates and interested parties. Also if you have a moment, tag my sponsors and thank them for supporting me and my game. Doing so ensures I get to attend more tournaments and compete more regularly, thus providing more insightful material like this for you and your game as well. For the latest info follow me on instagram and give my Facebook page a like as well! See you guys again tomorrow!
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